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Notes From Easter Island by Karen Kondazian

December 12th 2012 arrived quietly behind my back… I had been so busy assisting The Whip to find its own strong wings that there had not been a chance to look forward and dream about my forthcoming trip to South America, Easter Island, Machu Picchu–but unbelievably, it was now in my lap looking up at me.

The moment that I truly realized I was on my journey, I watched Los Angeles disappear through the small airplane window and heard first in Spanish, the emergency instructions, then in English. The next hours on LAN (Lima Airlines) were a Fellini blur of trays of airplane food and wine, tangled airplane blankets and pillows– waiting in strange airports feeling lost, not sure if I was in the right place, the right terminal, the right gate, as no one seemed to speak English…  clocks that seemed to go forward, backward—Finally, seventeen hours, one refueling and 2 planes later, I peered out a now familiar little window, and watched mysterious dark fingers of clouds bleed into the psychedelic orange sunrise. We were heading over a small piece of land that, seemingly, was floating at the very end of the earth. At long last, we were landing… on the most isolated inhabited island in the entire world… the mysterious, mystical Easter Island!

 

 

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I staggered out of the plane, suffocating in the heat and humidity… December, summer in this part of the world. Placed between the airplane itself and the little terminal, a hand painted sign pointed out that we had arrived in Easter Island…a colorful flowered lei was placed around my neck…faces and arms helped me and my luggage into a van. Bouncing along the primitive rutted roads to the hotel… Explora, it was called… a rustic, low lying wooden structure, part of the land… with wide open shutters flung open to the navy sea and fields of grazing horses and cattle. I collapsed on my bed staring up at the wooden timbered ceiling…. nausea, headache, muscles tight and painful from the trip and no sleep… the air breezing through the windows, so clean that my lungs began to cough, expelling toxins of the world I had just come from. I slept with shoes on and awoke to the sunlight… it was 9:00 pm… it felt like a dream… Light and night. I discovered in the glass covered restaurant that the sun does not go down until after 10 pm. My dinner and wine tasted of the earth. The next few days I tramped, climbed, panted… The great, many ton, (some 82 tons) looming volcanic rock Moai heads of Easter Island, (Rapa Nui, Chile 1250-1500)… 887 of them scattered all over the hills, on the beaches, facing their generations of children… protecting them, the beautiful people of the island, with their golden flesh bodies carved from Michelangelo’s chisel.

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The forever vivid towering image of the magical Moai… on rough, ancient platforms, 15 of them… giant and godlike, lined up one next to the other, backlit from the setting sun.

I held my breath and felt myself moved backward step after step…faster and faster in the field… their immense power pushing me back in worship and obedience. I finally stopped and faced them all… their unspeakable energy. I remember not breathing for a very long moment… My body prickled. It was as though I was waiting for them to speak. I waited a long while. It was getting dark. And then finally the staring stone eyes told me one word… eternal…  that we are ‘always’… just as they are… and always will be.

 

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